6 The Bulletin. 



Its ease of cultivation, nutritive value and ease of preparation 

 for food, its almost exclusive possession of the elements necessary to 

 make a light, porous bread, and its ability to adapt itself to widely 

 different soil and climatic conditions has made it one of the principal 

 foods of man. While the wheat crop has long been important in 

 countries occupied by civilized people, its use is becoming more and 

 more pronounced as civilization advances. Indeed, wheat is the 

 principal edible cereal of most civilized countries. 



Wheat, unlike the potato, corn and tobacco, is a naturalized plant 

 in America, its cultivation having been commenced here some time 

 after Columbus reached our shores. 



Prior to 1880, wheat was grown pretty generally over North Caro- 

 lina, but since that time the production has been largely restricted 

 to the Piedmont and Mountainous sections of the State. 



A number of factors have operated in curtailing the production 

 of wheat in the Coastal Plain region, not least among these being a 

 general absence of soils suited to wheat culture and a lack of sufficient 

 water power to operate the primitive burr mills used in its manu- 

 facture into flour. The farmers of the section were also, doubtless, 

 influenced against wheat growing by the better adaptation of their 

 soils to and the promise of greater rewards from the growing of 

 cotton, peanuts, light tobacco and early truck crops. 



STATISTICS. 



The annual supply of wheat to the world to-day is something over 

 three billion bushels, of which the United States produces about one- 

 fourth. For years no systematic records were kept of the yield of 

 wheat in this country. In 1850 the Census Report showed the 

 production of the United States to be about 100,000,000 bushels. 

 From this amount the yield grew to our maximum production of 

 over 748,000,000 bushels in 1901. In 1907 the average yield of 

 wheat per acre in the United States was 14 bushels. The same year 

 the average acre yield for North Carolina was 9.5 bushels. 



Strange as it may appear, the price of wheat in the United States 

 in 1850, when we grew but 100,000,000 bushels, was lower than 

 it is to-day, when we grow over 700,000,000 bushels. This shows 

 that while the supply has increased over 600 per cent, the demand 

 has undergone an even more pronounced change. 



In 1900 North Carolina produced 5,960,803 bushels of wheat 

 worth 82 cents a bushel, representing a money value to the State of 

 $4,887,858. In 1907 we produced but 5,320,000 bushels, but the 

 price advanced to $1.07 a bushel, thus giving the crop a money value 

 of $5,692,000, an increase of $804,142 over the larger but lower- 

 priced crop of 1900. 



